February 08, 2013

My dear Miss Monroe . . . by Molly McQuade

My dear Miss Monroe,

Of course, my letters to you are a kind of work-in-progress. Even by now, you barely know me, and I haven't quite explained exactly why I want to write to you. With that in mind, let me confess something before I bid you a goodbye, later today, temporarily. (Surely, I'll write to you again.)

My confession: I write to you because I like to read your letters, as well (of course) as read the letters that were written to you.

The letter is an unappreciated form. Usually it's reckoned as informal, except when writers go to it with a formal purpose. Usually it's considered as incidental, unless composed on important stationery. The letter is most often interstitial: it plays and works in between, in back of, inside of, always peripheral.

But being interstitial means a letter, or the work and play of letters plural, can and does command a furtive pathway of complex, integral connection unavailable to anyone who writes anything that is not a letter. Being interstitial also means we have to work for it, without assurance of a find or a finished product.

Letters may include unsuspected secrets. Regardless, to close readers they may yield unexpected insights.

Why?

Because writing a letter meant mainly for just one person can prompt a carelessly subjective intelligence: careless of whatever might be the letter's broader reception, for few will probably read it. Careless (relatively) of the need to plot or politick in a letter, for much the same reason. Careless of the worldly consequences for the writer of the letter. But caring, all the same, for the writing as a forthrightly intimate exchange with someone, not another.

In a letter, one can assume a listener. I am the first, if not the last, for myself when I write a letter to you.

Comments

My dear Miss Monroe . . . by Molly McQuade

My dear Miss Monroe,

Of course, my letters to you are a kind of work-in-progress. Even by now, you barely know me, and I haven't quite explained exactly why I want to write to you. With that in mind, let me confess something before I bid you a goodbye, later today, temporarily. (Surely, I'll write to you again.)

My confession: I write to you because I like to read your letters, as well (of course) as read the letters that were written to you.

The letter is an unappreciated form. Usually it's reckoned as informal, except when writers go to it with a formal purpose. Usually it's considered as incidental, unless composed on important stationery. The letter is most often interstitial: it plays and works in between, in back of, inside of, always peripheral.

But being interstitial means a letter, or the work and play of letters plural, can and does command a furtive pathway of complex, integral connection unavailable to anyone who writes anything that is not a letter. Being interstitial also means we have to work for it, without assurance of a find or a finished product.

Letters may include unsuspected secrets. Regardless, to close readers they may yield unexpected insights.

Why?

Because writing a letter meant mainly for just one person can prompt a carelessly subjective intelligence: careless of whatever might be the letter's broader reception, for few will probably read it. Careless (relatively) of the need to plot or politick in a letter, for much the same reason. Careless of the worldly consequences for the writer of the letter. But caring, all the same, for the writing as a forthrightly intimate exchange with someone, not another.

In a letter, one can assume a listener. I am the first, if not the last, for myself when I write a letter to you.